


Toils and Troubles

by ZenzaNightwing



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: BAMF Julia Wicker, Cuddling & Snuggling, Empathy, Fluff, Goddesses, Haven't watched season 4 yet, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know enough about canon to be writing this, Multi, Sharing a Bed, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, a sad bitch plays out a no consequence power fantasy of cuddling with competent women, but guess where we are, filled with a generic sense of dread so i'm filling it with fanfiction, only vaguely know what happens, season 4? I don't know her
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2019-12-30 08:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18311585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenzaNightwing/pseuds/ZenzaNightwing
Summary: When Julia was five, she accidentally took the head off of her favorite barbie. She cried, for a bit, but then stood up and gathered the parts and took them to her mom and asked for the glue.Distantly, Julia worries for the safety of the worlds, if her at five years old had more emotional maturity and problem solving skills than the majority of the deities she has encountered.(or: Julia is a literal goddess and uses time travel as her super glue of choice)





	1. Chapter 1

Two chairs, two parasols, two goddesses.

They say things come in threes, but trapped in the haze of new power as she is, there seem to only be twos, little couples of scattered light dancing before her eyes.

Iris is a cold goddess. Maybe not intentionally, for all of her fleet footed secrecy, her eyes dancing with a thousand colors, the illusion of brightness and warmth, but she is.

Cherry blossoms fall around them both, gathering by their feet and disappearing in the next second, only there as interruption, only there as a mask, a disguise, a trick to pull the eye and mind away from the meaning of words.

 _Tricks, tricks, tricks,_ the seed within whispers, digging deep within her willingly given memories, the surrendered pieces of herself given to the thing that is hers, now and forever. _We do not like tricks._

Tricks belonged to Reynard. Julia is not him.

Iris speaks of the big picture. One world, _we’ll start with one_ , and yet there are two of them and two eyes vacant of humanity staring into her own, two spiraling into infinity, the cold metal of a parasol beneath her palm.

There is something so much colder about this goddess of rainbows, something older and infinitely more brittle trapped beneath her curls and soft features and empty eyes. She could save countless lives, answering a few more prayers for the sake of those who ask them, but all she says is for morale. Like they are in a war, and not the masters and makers of destiny.

 _Morale_. Not morals.

Julia asks her most critical question. Why she can feel her friends in the back of her mind, constant and forever, glowing in the frantic tumult of her mind like streetlights, like neon signs calling her toward the safe harbor of their street, wrapped up in their love and their forgiveness and their constant worry.

They are so bright in her mind, so beautifully close with such vibrant emotion that feels distant from her in this place, in this mental void of emotion she’s adopted for just a bit, just to try on Persephone’s dignified indifference, to see if that fits her. The spark within her refuses, begging for just one second to be wild and free and reckless with love and emotion and sharp-toothed smiles, to give and give so much to the world and take what they can spare and nothing more.

_It takes a bit for the connections to dissolve._

That hits her full force. The worried callousness of her words. Iris does not care for Julia’s friends, for the people that took her through the darkest of her times and gave her the love and affection the divine seed needed to blossom, to bloom and take control and breathe in its first gasps of clean air. They gave her the crucible with which to form herself from what Reynard and Persephone left her as, and Iris seems more worried that Julia is thinking about them at all than the fact that Quentin is a blazing column of fear in the back of her mind, shot through with holes and ready to collapse beneath the covering of affection for her, all the facades he’s so fond of putting up.

 _This is the discipline_.

This is not discipline. This is deprivation. This is no better than losing her shade all over again, losing her ability to feel, to experience.

Yes, yes, she could make a world with fairies without pain, she could turn away and forget everything-

There is a reason, though. A reason why when you see a child being abused, you call the authorities and you fix the problem, you don’t just leave it behind and have a kid of your own who you don’t abuse and call that equivalent. Suffering and a lack of suffering do not balance each other out.

There is a table of tea, of pastries, of little tiny cakes in whimsical shapes, and neither of them touch it. What use is it to them? They are deities. They subsist on prayer and belief, on worship and remembrance, they do not require mortal food. It is an illusion of mortality. It is a trick.

_We do not like tricks._

Iris stands up, parasol glittering in hand, and begins walking away. The blossoms do not feel like blossoms anymore. They are snow, cold and beautiful and temporary, but oh so dangerous once compounded.

Her hand clenches on the handle of her parasol as the nervous energy and frantic anticipation from her friends fills the connections between her and them. She can feel the way the boat rocks, this far away, on solid ground. She can feel the dread and the hope and the reluctance and the courage and the stubborn will.

She can feel the weight of the godkiller digging into her waistband.

Iris is walking beside her, in a forest of falling flowers and fluttering snow. She does not have a waistband in her leggings.

Distantly, she feels their panic, their resolution, can feel everything within them reaching out for her, pleading for her silently, these broken souls that require something that is hers, that is freely given.

They walk. Lost in her thoughts, in the pains and prayers of her peanut gallery, they walk and only stop once they reach a table, and a glass ball is picked up carelessly from the surface, held up to the sunlight irreverently, despite it being a representation of new life. A manifestation of a planet not yet made, but soon to be made.

There is so much pain within all of her friends, pulling and tugging at her without mercy. “It’s bad,” Julia whispers, and that is not enough. There are no words quite equivalent in English or Sanskrit or Old High German or any other language she knows to describe the tumult of emotions that come from them, the flashes of images, of raw panic high enough that the prayer sent in the space of a second is a million minutes long, achingly detailed and painfully frightened.

_No tricks, no tricks. Save them. Save them?_

“In a blink it’ll be good again. And in two blinks, they’ll be long gone.”

What is it about divinity, about the power to help as many people as they can, that makes the gods so callous? Is it the eternity of it, the day in day out grind of countless souls slipping past their fingers, watching those they favor die out in the time it takes them to make a _cute little landmass_ on a glass globe and begin the cycle again? Is it the crippling loneliness, the lack of challenge from anything they might face?

The gods are little better than children, fighting over toys that will break, inevitably, whining for new ones.

When Julia was five, she accidentally took the head off of her favorite barbie. She cried, for a bit, but then stood up and gathered the parts and took them to her mom and asked for the glue. By dinner that night, the barbie had her head back on and kept it there until she was 8 and Mackenzie threw it in a gutter and it disappeared down a storm drain, never to be seen again.

She loved that barbie, loved to play with it even though there were so many others and she could have asked for another. But she loved it, and so she put in that little bit of effort to set things right. She went to the place to get her resources, and she fixed the problem with her own two hands and her mother’s guidance.

Distantly, Julia worries for the safety of the worlds, if her at five years old had more emotional maturity and problem solving skills than the majority of the deities she has encountered

Closer at hand, she feels Quentin. Feels him desolate and empty and so resigned to his fate, to remain kneeling on the floor until the monster eats him whole or he starves to death, staring at the seven keys that would have been salvation reduced to slag.

And something within her hardens into resolve, despite what Iris says about letting go, because gods damn it, this? This is not _discipline_.

This is a test. A test with one question, yes or no, true or false, binary code dictating actions. She can listen to Iris, close herself off, and let them die in a castle below her childhood fantasy. She can listen to her screaming emotions and go to them, sacrifice the light in her to put light back in them-

The last time she was fully conscious she was taking a test, she was in a room at Brakebills doing her best to answer questions in languages whose alphabets she was unfamiliar with, to give satisfactory answers to mathematical theories she had never heard of in her life.

The last time she took a test, there were two outcomes. Go to Brakebills, learn magic, learn what lies beneath her own skin, become one of the finest magicians ever taught. Be rejected from Brakebills and be removed from the equation entirely with no memory, no recollection, cast adrift as the 40th variable changed in a long-suffering equation.

And the last time she took a test, she chose a third option.

Be rejected by Brakebills. Become a hedge-witch. Become a magician. Become a goddess. Save everyone you can.

So she opens her mouth and says-

“I don’t think, I will, Iris.”

No tricks.

 _No tricks_.

Just a leap of faith.

There is so much damage within the world, so much damage that started before magic died. Damage that is fixable.

Prometheus had the power to make a key that could turn back time, and then had room to make several others.

Julia can too.

So she reaches out, holds onto her collection of streetlights, undamaged yet shaken, all of them leaning into her touch, her comfort, sending prayers her way.

They are her most loyal followers. The Church of Our Lady of the Tree. They built it with sawdust and splinters in their hands, gave her their suffering and let her become something even greater than that.

So she reaches out and holds them close.

Reaches out to Penny, stuck in the Underworld, feels the weight of his contract brush away under her hand. She holds the spark that used to belong to the son of Persephone. Death is a simple matter.

Reaches out and gives him form. Sends Josh and the other Penny back to Earth, back to a safe place.

Reaches out and speaks into the silent void in the corner of her head.

Reaches out to Chaos. To the mother of the gods.

Reaches out and says-

“ _Please._ No tricks, no trickery.”

And says-

“Let me try. Let me try to fix them.”

The seed within her rises up, tall and multi-limbed and stretching for the sun, a bonfire where a spark once stood. Comes from within, comes from without, from the void and the light.

**_Let. I can respect that, child._ **

**_Indeed._ **

_Let there be light._

And there was light.

And when the light clears, the seven of them stand in a line on a busy city sidewalk. Half of them look like obscure cosplayers, but they are alive, and they are there.

Around them, for the first time in a long while, magic swirls, gusting through them, knocking most to their knees.

Julia, half knocked out of breath, half breathless from exhilaration, gasps for air and listens to the hum of magic around her, not just emanating from within her, to the sounds of the city, to-

Quentin yelling, distantly “-into it Julia! I learned magic tricks just to keep up with you. It was our thing!”

To her own voice responding, quieter, too quiet to understand the words.

Across the street, there they stand. Two jackasses who don’t know what they will suffer. Two idiots about to get called away by the siren’s song of magic. Two worlds, dragged back through the torrent of time, Fillory humming at the edge of her senses.

Eliot stares. Margo, too. All of them. Watching the baby-faced, unhaunted versions of Quentin and Julia quietly argue on a city street. Watching, because they are afraid of what will happen if they do anything more.

They are back. Back where it began.

Back to the start. To square one.

Game. Set. Match.


	2. Chapter 2

Julia is numb with exhaustion, with exhilaration, with the spark within her churning out ember-bright wisps of triumphant success and overwhelming love. She feels drained, mental hands still knotted figuratively in the collar of her friend’s souls, dragging them along with her in a tangle, latched close, afraid to be released.

She’s pretty sure her metaphorical grip on them is the only thing keeping her upright for now. Their shock numbing her, their ever-present affection keeping her strong, their devotion feeding the spark within her from the guttering flames, so much divine power within taken as toll for their passage, from the higher up predecessor of Charon, taking her payment and allowing her to drag the others behind her in a white-knuckled, desperate grip.

She knows what would happen otherwise. It flutters across her mind, the emotions winning out, her spark fleeing her, rooted into metal and given as a sacrifice to the altar of the gods. She sees something worse than anything else the gods have dared to make, fed with blood and hungry to make pain, escaping in the skin of one of her Church. Sees pain and death.

Sees, and knows, and hates it all the more for almost being what she did.

There are only two realities she can see, of the many branches she has been afforded a view of, in which she chose to leave them be, chose to let them suffer. There are hundreds in which she chose to abandon her spark, to snuff it out in metal and rushing blue water enslaved by the keepers of books. This is the only one she can see in which she _reached_ , so desperate and new and pained, and took them all back. Then again, that may just be a quirk of fate. She can only see so many branches of the tree from where she sits upon her own branch, after all. She cannot see what path lays ahead, only vague glimpses of twigs masked by concealing leaves.

She almost destroyed them all. She can only hope she can make this one path matter.

Margo is the one to shake off the shock first, grabbing as many of their elbows as possible and hauling them back to their feet, head darting back and forth as if to watch the currents of magic flowing around all of them, called to Julia as water would to a dip in a riverbed. For those that are the most out of it - Penny, newly reformed, and Quentin, blank-eyed with his mind still back in Fillory - she drags them up and drapes their arms around whoever is closest, Penny paired with Kady, and Quentin with Eliot.

Eliot is still looking down at his hands, shaking and brimming to the surface with magic, with power left undiscovered for so long, only found in the memories of a place in which he died, but he snaps one out quickly to balance Quentin to his side. Alice honestly doesn’t look that much better than Quentin, but she’s sane enough to deal with standing, just not much else. Penny is just straight unconscious, which is a little unfortunate, but he does require his rest, and Kady looks like she’d prefer to drown than let go of Penny, who seems to be her only focus.

That leaves two competent, semi-sane women to run this whole hell-train.

“So,” Margo starts, pursing her lips aggressively, “as our local goddess, mind explaining _what_ exactly in the hell is happening.” She spits, then goes white and claps a hand over her right eye, folding over slightly at the waist. “Shit!” She hisses, ignoring the people streaming by on the sidewalk, giving sideways glances, “This is a hangover and a half, Christ!”

Julia steps forward, only semi-conscious of her own movement, stuck in her thoughts as she is, hands reaching out an soothing her hands over Margo’s shoulder, answering her unspoken prayer with divinity in washing rushes of healing power. The problem is not as physical as it is an overload of magic in her highly receptive eye, too long deprived of the swirling currents of power they are meant to access. A temporary aid, just so it can acclimate. “You’ll be fine, Margo,” she hears her own voice say, but still believes every single word that comes out of her mouth all the same. The divinity is an expression of her deepest compassion, far removed from her own suffering, but so deeply tapped into theirs.

“Margo. Margo, what are we- what just happened,” Eliot stutters out, single free hand running through the air like he can’t believe the slight, natural resistance he comes across at it, so imperceptible until one is denied magic for so long, “Julia? Quentin?” His hand on Quentin’s side tightens just barely, drags them even closer if it is possible, “Shit, what-”

“Eliot, I love you, but shut the hell up and let the people with functioning X chromosomes do the talking,” Margo soothes, stepping out of Julia’s grasp and fixing her hair, outwardly stoic, but with her little streetlight neon signature in the corner of Julia’s mind pulsing with contentment and thanks. Margo tends to be quiet with her admiration until she bursts with it, and it’s gratifying to feel it running in silver-bright connections down her much smaller street of devotees, now that her following in Fillory is gone.

It’s so intimate, ridiculously intimate, being this close to her only followers, so close to the only ones to give her prayers, close enough to fulfill them in an instant, to feel their happiness and the snap-crackle-joy of the answering of a prayer. She can’t quite imagine those many, many tree branches without this feeling, this constant love, this perpetual undeniable connection between them from every distance, an unwavering belief. Life before divinity came knocking and tore her into messy pieces from the inside out was good, but after the seed had grown, the spark had hit the tinder, there would be little she would change for it. The only thing she would trade for it is for her streetlights, to keep them burning.

She can hardly  conceptualize those tree branches without her divinity, but she can’t even conceive the few in which she chooses to abandon the founding members of her church, to allow them to disappear and get lost in the distant call of Fillory’s prayers.

She feels vaguely nauseous, knowing what she got so close to abandoning. Knowing that there are timelines so close to her own that the spark within her went out.

 _No tricks, no tricks, just home and love,_ it speaks, leaps up and turns silver threads to gold, humming in contentment, overused by the travel backward and smaller in power, but not in support.

Julia blinks, thought taking up the space of a second but still so bright, taking up a forever. “We need to find someplace safe. I’m too weak to protect everyone right now, I need rest, we all need rest- god, Quentin, how many hours of sleep did you even get- we need somewhere. Safe. Somewhere safe.” The words come bursting out, thoughts half formed and being placed into the air without a care.

Margo balks, hands reaching out to smooth the air between them - typically an entirely superfluous gesture, but this time having an actual effect on the currents of magic being drawn toward the whirlpool of Julia, settling them gentle and soft, placid and still, for just a moment. “Okay, babe, let’s calm down for a bit, mm’kay? You’re right, but we need to calm down first. Is there anywhere we could go that would be safe right now?” Her own hands smooth over Julia’s shoulders as she speaks in the tone she uses when she is forced to talk of emotions, fingers rubbing consoling over the white shawl coat Julia wears over her leggings, brushing aside the tears that must have slipped out in the halfway world of thought and almost-regret.

Eliot clears his throat, one hand clawed and clasping over Quentin’s side, dragging him against his vested side, the other shakingly pressed against his own chest, right over his patterned tie. Quentin is halfway limp, forehead against Eliot’s bicep, both arms hanging limply at his side despite Margo’s efforts to sling one over Eliot’s shoulders for stability, eyes open but staring emptily as the day begins to take its toll. “Shit, uh, Bambi, if we’re where I think we are, then your place is going to be free game in a few days.”

Margo tilts her head back and lets her eyes slip closed, an annoyed groan building from her throat as she crosses her arms petulantly. “Shit, you’re right. Any of our safehouses haven’t been made yet, and all of our places have _fucking people_ in them. Ugh.” She whines, blowing a strand of hair away from her face angrily, foot tapping.

“Let’s-” Alice clears her throat, feet held awkwardly underneath her as if she can’t believe she’s present and her body’s jury is still out on the whole ‘standing up’ thing, “Let’s just get a hotel room. For tonight. Just sleep- al-alright?”

“Yes. That sounds good, just-” Julia’s voice begins speeding up, rushing out, “gods, that was close and we can’t just- shit, but we can and I- ok. Okay. Alright. Yeah. Yes. Let’s do that- the hotel- just-”

“Julia. Calm your shit.” Margo may be mortal, but she is a goddess in this moment, head tipped regally backward and looking Julia in the eye, speaking with infinite grace and gesturing in gentle, prowling movements, hands like stalking butterflies on the hunt, alighting on Julia’s shoulders and brushing her hair back, the riot of magic around calming, leaving her mind blessedly empty with the proximity of her followers. “Preferably, we get out of this goddamn city first. Lord knows what’s going to happen if we manage to run into our mini-me’s.” Her nose wrinkles, “Ugh, I still had that horrible blouse I thought I could pull off. We abso-fuckin-lutely _cannot_ meet our past selves, just in case I’m wearing _that_ piece of _shit._ ”

Julia, wavering on her feet, metaphysical hands still clasped tightly around them all like Eliot’s hand on Quentin’s side, giggles. It’s half-crazed, and it’s unbearably soft, but it’s there, it’s there and so are her emotions, all of them except for her worry and protection shunted backwards as she runs on autopilot, as her divinity takes the frayed reins.

Margo composes herself again, with a soft smile, before continuing, “We find a hotel, and we get our shit together.” Her hands drop from brushing Julia’s hair behind her ears to clasped behind Julia’s neck in a loose embrace, gentle pressure against the steady headache that’s been growing since she froze time and saved Dust. “‘kay, sweetheart?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”

Then, with barely a thought, they are elsewhere, far from the city, far from the enveloping magic of Brakebills, far away, in answer to Margo’s request, to her prayer given without clasped hands but with gentle persuasion.

Margo is not one to beg, not until all of the cards have been thrown down and she stands on the card table and strips everything from herself to make up the difference. Margo does not beg, but when she does, she does it with all of her heart and soul and mind, everything of herself devoted to the one antithetical act.

When Margo begs, she does it with everything she has ever contained, all of her desperation and bitterness.

Margo will not beg for Julia, will not beg for anyone, ever, until it is the last option. Her sugar-sweet requests carry the same weight as a prayer would. Faith placed, words spoken, heart and mind, given and sequestered within the burning fire of divine power. A person who would beg for petty things must pray, as they have cheapened their devotion to their requests. Margo need only speak it.

But Julia cannot answer the prayer completely, can only fulfill the most of it - far away, hotel, safe. She does not have the strength within to do any more.

Light streams and space folds, and Julia passes her hands through, reaches, grips tight to her friends, to everything she has left, and drags herself through to the other side with a flex of her fingers, a gathering of her strength as she pulls all that she cares for with her to where she can fulfill this one, singularly important prayer.

The ground is covered in snow, as they make their entrance, feet wobbling suddenly over the uneven sidewalk. Rooted grasses spill from cracks in the pavement, chip bags spiraling away in the wind, and a building sitting low and squat to the ground, asphalt splitting two sections of lazily maintained rooms, full of cars.

That’s just about all Julia manages to see before the divinity within reaches up, and pulls her down.

_Rest, now. Let the church give love._

_No tricks, no tricks._

_Rest._

So Julia does.


	3. Chapter 3

So. Julia teleports them to the middle of fuck-off nowhere, with a population of ‘too-many-people-for-this-motel’ and an incredible lack of money. They weren’t exactly expecting to bribe whatever kind of ‘gods’ mistake’ they found in Blackspire, and it wasn’t like Julia had anything on her, what with being a goddess without any apparent pockets.

The curse of female fashion apparently extends to the divine spectrum, and Margo is completely unsurprised but would also like to drop kick whoever decided that piece of shit move and then give them the award for ‘universe’s biggest douchebag’.

Long story short, Alice is elected representative to get them rooms, as she’s the only one of them not lugging around another of their group like a fashion accessory from hell. She’s also the only one with enough practiced control over her magic to conjure the money they’ll need, so that’s a plus.

The six of them, all assholes of various shades, sit out and shiver on the shitty pavement, clutching onto whoever they’ve been previously assigned with reckless abandon, skin craving the contact as magic fills the void in them. It coats them in gummy layers, sinking into their parched reserves and then deeper within.

Their bodies have starved for magic. Make no mistake, magicians are magical creatures, but they are symbiotes, or parasites. One or the other, they must feed off of magic, or they start to wither, or worse, _adapt._ In order to hold onto what little magic they had, the most crucial sustenance they could possess, their bodies forced their reserves to adapt to deeper, more jealously held levels than most magicians would ever develop.

There are horror stories, about the very few magicians kept from magic for extended periods of time, about the way their magic had changed afterward, more eldritch and horrible. About strange physical deformities, about diseases developed of the mind, about brands of gorgeous insanity that can be seen from miles away.

Now, with the air fever bright and gorgeous with gossamer threads of light that hold them up like puppets, their metaphysical hands reaching into the air without their own conscious input, snagging at the threads and pulling them in close to the center of themself, the very core of being.

Power. Limitless, amazing power, after so long of feeling powerless.

There is little wonder the singular magicians who went through deprivation came out twisted and half destroyed. They did not have others around them grabbing and tangling to puppet strings with the same voracity, twisting them into a thick rope, latching onto with all of their hands like desperate sailors clinging onto the rigging in a storm.

They didn’t have a whirlpool of magic and light next to them, solid and constant and glowing with energy, even passed out and partially comatose.

Margo was not raised religious. It’s not like she was raised atheist either, it’s just that her parents didn’t really care. She cut off any slight belief she may have had in the Big Dick in the sky that one unforgettable, hazy night she tried to sniff her body weight in cocaine.

Now that she’s aware the gods exist-

Not much has actually changed.

For one second, what with her life hanging in the balance between twin gods of chaos and order, with immortals coming out of the woodwork with creaking bones, contracts with an eternal library, with her friends playing card tricks and hooky with the divine, she almost tried out praying again, just for the sake of it. Unfortunately, the gods are irredeemable dicks, given an eternity to learn to help and only choosing to give grief and suffering for entertainment. She wouldn’t pray to any of those posers, not until it was her last option.

She could bring herself to pray to Julia, Margo decides. Julia, who went through hell and came out the other end with her arms outstretched, ready and willing to save and protect, to help and to hold. Julia, who feels paper thin in Margo’s arms, trusting her to protect her and give her salvation the same way Julia has now, shunting them back into the past as the last hope for magic withered.

Margo adjusts her hold on Julia and shivers as the threads flock towards her even more, trying to attach themselves to Julia’s orbit and getting caught up in the frantic grasping of her friends. Subtly, perhaps unconsciously, both Eliot and Kady move closer to Margo, toward the most opportune place to grab the threads, until they are pressed thigh to thigh, eyes closed and arms holding on tight to their charges.

“They’re- uh, overbooked,” Alice announces as she returns, clutching her arms against the chill, “Apparently the campgrounds got snowed out, so everybody and their dog stopped here to figure out options.”

“Shit,” Eliot whispers, looking down at Quentin, who remains insensate and motionless against his chest, “Where do we go? Our magical transport-” he nods to Julia- “is down for the count, and I’m not risking it out here. Not when we have people we have to protect.”

Alice clears her throat messily. She doesn’t do it to call attention to herself, but more to get rid of the viscid texture of spells yet to be cast filling up everywhere it can reach, trickling down her throat demandingly, begging to be used and utilized like it was a few minutes ago, to conjure the money needed to book the hotel room.

Yes, unfortunately. Room. Singular.

She holds up the key, as if in apology. “It’s not the best option, but- we can all agree it’s the best one we have right now.”

Margo swoops up to her feet, hauling up Julia in a princess carry. So what, it’s always been a dream of hers, sue her. She’s already done the ‘dramatic running down castle hallway at night carrying a single candle, trailing an ornate silk dress behind’, might as well get ‘carry heavily competent woman in your arms’ off the list, too.

“I could give less of a shit whether or not we have a goddamn _palace_ . We get out of the cold, and we shelve the assholes who passed out on us on the bed and we get our shit toge-” Margo stumbles, narrowly keeping her footing and her hold on Julia- “Okay. Fuck. Nevermind. We all sleep, and _then_ we get our shit together.”

The exhaustion hits abruptly as they struggle their way to their hotel room. As they walk past other rooms, the doors echo with screaming children and quiet conversation and more than one couple working out aggression creatively.

Margo couldn’t care less - she just wants a bed to pass out on, close to everyone, holding onto them in the storm as magic bombards them, begging for them to accept something deeper than they can hold. All they can do is clamber to add more to the rope they cling to desperately as they acclimatize to life with magic.

The key slides into the lock easily, but the door creaks as Alice opens it, allowing everyone else to shuffle through with their burdens. It does not bode well for the general quality of the room but, whatever. Margo will take a vaguely horizontal, indoor surface. She would sleep on the kitchen counter if she had to, at this point, except for the part that means the others wouldn’t fit on the counter.

The bed is tiny- a sad excuse for anything more than a twin bed, but it is a bed. Maybe a bed that promises creaky springs and a sore back in a dubiously hygienic environment, but it’s not the worst place Margo has ever chosen to sleep.

The problem comes when there are seven adult humans trying to get as much human contact on them as possible. Margo’s skin crawls even now, without the others pressed against her, her metaphysical hands slipping on the rope, fraying it and sending painful shocks of stray magic through her system.

Now. Margo has kept a good hold on her magic for years now, but when she first got it there was near-infinite levels of chaos chasing her footsteps, her slightest whims being executed as clumsily and dramatically as possible by her magic unconsciously before she managed to iron out her control.

She has no such control now.

The bed expands, denting the plaster behind the headboard as the frame shoots out a haphazard number on inches in each direction. It’s ugly as fuck, but whatever, man. They’ll be out of here before room service can see anything problematic about their newly re-sized bed and associated structural damage.

“Tonight, we sleep like kings,” Margo announces, “Mainly because I’m High King and I order all of you dumb bitches to cuddle with me.”

Julia gets set in the approximate center of the bed, Margo curling up against her right side as she snaps impatiently for the others to join. Eliot sets Quentin on Julia’s left and then lays himself out over all three of their legs, head planted on a throw pillow on Quentin’s lap that telekinetically flew there the second Eliot tried to figure out somewhere to sit. Alice hunches up her legs, like a cat nesting, with her head pillowed between the press of Julia and Quentin’s legs, the top of her head pressed against Eliot’s chest. Kady maneuvers Penny to the center of the bed, between herself and Alice, clinging onto his stomach with her front pressed against his back, her head against Margo’s legs.

 _Sleep_ . Something begs of them all, _merely close your eyes and rest your hearts._

_You are safe, safe my children._

_You have given me love, now I give you salvation._

_I give you safe haven._

_No tricks._

_No tricks._

_Sleep, my loves. Let the darkness come. Know it will be gone in the morning._

_Do not wait for the dawn._

_Sleep. Rest._

_No tricks._

It is a thoughtless act, to close her eyes, to feel the others do the same, shaking and shivering as they grip onto the rope together, hands overlapping, light made together, snuffing itself out willingly.

The dawn will come tomorrow, and when it does, they will rise together with the sun beneath their skins and fix what has been broken. The dawn will always come, so long as they remain connected by heart and mind, body and soul.

No tricks, they fall together, and the twilight comes over them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I do 'and there was only one bed'? Was this completely self indulgent? Do I want to be held? Yes, yes I do. I have heard slight rumblings of season 4 and am desperately pulling out as much good vibes as I can from my hat. I am also chronically incapable of not worldbuilding, so whoopsy daisies.
> 
> God help us all. Comment if you would like to feed me.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I make the title a Macbeth pun? Yes, yes I did. Am I too tired for this? Yes, yes I am. Do I remember or know enough about canon to properly write this? No, no I don't. Will that stop me? Fuck no.
> 
> Welcome to this hell I like to call 'Julia was too badass to lose that quickly as a goddess and I'm suing'. I don't like to call it that. That's just the visceral emotion that inspired it.
> 
> God only knows how long this will take me to update. Please comment, for a poor, starving artist.


End file.
